Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the First Sunday of Lent(A), Vigil
February 29, 2020
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us tomorrow on the First Sunday of Lent.
- Most people have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because the desert is what helps us to understand the 40-day pilgrimage of Lent, in which we join and imitate Jesus in the desert and ponder the fruits of what he learned and experienced there upon his return. To go into the desert, however, is increasingly difficult for people today. We’re so connected that if we are out of cell phone range we can easily feel totally lost. While the Lord is not calling us all physically to go to the Sahara, he is calling us to the state of the desert, removing ourselves from distractions, from the television, computer, radio, newspaper, and the various things that may be fine in themselves but crowd our lives with so much noise that we can’t hear God and so much clutter that we can’t see God. The first temptation we face each Lent is to refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up chocolate and potato chips. The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).
- The next lesson we need to grasp is what is supposed to be the fruit of our time in the desert, and that leads us to the Gospel of Jesus’ temptations by the devil in the desert, which St. Matthew could have known only if Jesus had told him. He prayed and fasted for an incredible forty days, which obviously would have left him physically weak and famished. It was at this moment of physical weakness that the Devil came to him to tempt him. In the temptations Jesus suffered and later described to his disciples, the devil brought out in a pristine form the types of temptation that Christ would undergo in his public ministry and that each of us undergoes in life. By focusing on how Christ responded, we, too, can learn how to receive his mercy and help so that we might be able to react as Jesus did.
- The first temptation was aimed right at Jesus’ tremendous hunger after 40 days of eating nothing: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of Bread.” Jesus had come to save people, to feed their most important hunger — the hunger of their souls — and Satan was trying to induce him, as Archbishop Sheen used to say, to become a baker rather than a Savior. To feed people’s physical hunger would be a great way to win a crowd and become popular. But Jesus himself was already living off a greater source of food and was preparing to train disciples to seek this same celestial nutrition: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This same insight he passed on to the crowds when they were following him to have their stomachs satiated: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (Jn 6:27). All of us in the Church need to remember what this greatest food source of all is. Lent is the time in which we grow in our trust for God’s providing, that he loves us more than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, that he will give us each day our daily bread, so that the devil is not able to tempt us by our tummies.
- In the second temptation, the devil tried to tempt Jesus to test God the Father. “If you are the Son of God,” he chortled, “throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone’ (cf. Ps 91).” This is the temptation to be presumptuous with God, to do something reckless and make us expect God to rescue us from it every time, to re-create our relationship with God on our terms rather than God’s terms; then, when God doesn’t seem to respond to that situation because such behavior harms us, the devil uses it to divide us even further from God. Some of us can smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for several decades and then expect God to cure us of lung cancer when we ask him politely in prayer. Jesus passed onto his disciples his response to the devil’s temptation, so that we could make it our own: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Rather than presumptuously throwing ourselves down from precipices, Lent is a time in which we trustingly throw ourselves up into God’s outstretched merciful arms.
- In the third temptation, the devil presented Jesus with a vision of all the kingdoms of the world and said to him “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” Jesus was about to announce that his kingdom is at hand, but the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44) was proposing a short cut, another way, an easier way. The devil likewise tempts us to compromise our relationship with God in order to get ahead or to get what we want. He promises power, prestige, profit or privilege if only compromise our relationship with God and his moral lawand serve the “ruler of this world.” Jesus rejected this temptation, firstly saying, “Get away, Satan! It is written, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Jesus told us about this third struggle so that we could learn from him how to know, love and serve God. God in his mercy liberally extends to us the grace of conversion in Lent so that we might recognize our idols, and turn away from them to love the true God, serving him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength.
- How do we imitate and live Jesus’ responses to the devil and grow in strength against temptation? Jesus tells us in St. Mark’s Gospel, that some devils are expunged “only by prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). That is why, on Ash Wednesday, the Church, presents before us the need for us to pray, to fast and to give of ourselves and what we have toward others. The devil seeks to trick us to disorder our relationship ourselves, to others, and to God, and fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are the respective antidotes. The more we fast and place spiritual nourishment over material food, the less vulnerable we will be to be tempted by bread and other earthly pleasures. The more we sacrifice ourselves and our belongings for the good of others, the less prone we will be to giving in to the devil’s seductions to give us power or control over others. The more we pray to God and seek to know and do his will in our lives the less assailable we will be to the devil’s traps presumptuously to force God’s hand. These three traditional practices of Lent are a great remedy, a merciful medicine, to the Evil One’s poison. And that’s why we need to make bold resolutions in Lent with regard to all three. Lent is an annual spiritual desert boot camp the Church gives us so that we might train with Jesus and following his example to be victorious in this most important battle we’ll ever fight. A blessed Lent!
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